The Legislative Reference Bureau as a Factor in 

State Development 


By Addison E. Sheldon, Director of Nebraska Legislative Reference Bureau 

(Read at meeting of National Association of Conservation Commissioners at Washington, D. C., 

November 17, 1913.) 


“A clearing house for information upon 
public affairs.” This is one definition of 
the legislative reference bureau. Another 
definition which we have worked out in 
Nebraska is that the legislative reference 
bureau is an institution which gives con¬ 
densed, comprehensive, impartial, accurate 
information on any subject under the sun 
upon five minutes notice. This is a large 
contract to fill. 

Legislative reference department work 
began at New York State Library in 1890. 
It appeared in improved and enlarged form 
at Madison, Wisconsin, in 1901. There are 
now legislative reference libraries in thirty- 
four states. There are municipal libraries 
working upon practically the same plan in 
a dozen cities. There are several scores 
of similar libraries now supported by the 
large corporations and private institutions 
of this country. There must be a reason. 

The world is wide. Knowledge is of uni¬ 
versal value. Experiment never ceases. To 
the possibilities of human progress based 
upon human experience, no prophet dare 
set a limit. Rational social progress in 
every field, from simple mechanics to su- 
perfinite philosophy, proceeds upon the 
lines of experiment, recorded results, criti¬ 
cism, reasoning, further experiment. The 
primitive oil lamp which the valley of the 
Euphrates gave to the valley of the Nile 
and which the valley of the Nile gave to 
Greece; the illuminating torch which 
Greece gave to Rome and Italy passed on 
to the nations of northern Europe; the 
electric beacon which flashes today from 
Europe and America around the world have 
one uninterrupted line of ancestry and in¬ 
heritance and were fed from one enlarging 
fuel-reservoir—the accumulated, classified 
experiment and experience of the human 
race. 

There are nearly a billion and a half of liv 
ing souls upon the surface of this planet. 
There are three thousand spoken languages. 
There are not far from a thousand separate 
governments. There are probably a hun¬ 
dred thousand local political units, having 
in some degree independence and initiative 
in social and political experiment. These 
are really a hundred thousand laboratories 
of social and political science. Their re¬ 
corded efforts and results have a value,— 
a widely varying value,—to every human 
society. 


Aristotle set the style for the modern 
legislative reference bureau two thousand 
years ago when he assigned his students 
the task of compiling and comparing the 
constitutions and customs of all the Gre¬ 
cian cities. For fifteen hundred years Aris¬ 
totle’s books were the texts and the inspir¬ 
ation of learning in the western civilized 
world. Little wonder that Aristotle held 
such pre-eminence. He and his students 
brought together for human study the great¬ 
est collection of human political experience 
that had ever been gathered. The mistake 
which the afterworld have made was in 
thinking that inspiring experiment ended 
with Aristotle. The modern legislative ref¬ 
erence bureau is Aristotle up to date. 

Democracy is the key word of modern 
social life. Beyond democracy,—faintly 
seen through the mountain mists of the 
higher human levels,—is co-operation, child 
of democracy. Hitherto democracy has ex¬ 
pressed her will and enforced her mandates 
through chosen delegates representing the 
people. However widely pure democracy, 
action by the entire mass of the people, 
may spread, whether upon the model of 
the ancient, open tribal assembly to which 
every free man was bidden, or upon the 
present day model of the open ballot box, 
to which every free man (and sometimes 
free woman) is invited, there must always 
be, so far as we now can see, some form 
of representation in government, some dele¬ 
gation of power, some committee chosen 
from the whole assembly by the voice of 
the assembly, to act in its stead and sub¬ 
mit its findings of fact and its judgments 
of action for the approval of the assembly. 
Parliaments and legislatures are the dom¬ 
inant forms of such chosen committees 
selected from the general popular assembly 
in Europe and America to voice the aspira¬ 
tions of democracy and write her will in 
statutes, ordinances and resolutions. 

The chosen committees, large or small, 
upon whose report modern democracy must 
in large measure base her judgment and 
her steps in the path of social progress, 
ought to be well informed,—accurately, 
broadly, reliably informed. The spirit of 
the people who chose them, the sound rea¬ 
soning of their own minds, the certainty of 
popular debate upon the final adoption of 
their report as a permanent part of the^ 





program of social progress, may and must 
be trusted for a fair report when full in¬ 
formation is present. 

In the preparation of its report to the 
people, parliament and legislature, council 
and commission, are beset with four great 
fundamental difficulties: 

(1) The number of subjects to be re¬ 
ported on. 

(2) The mass of material connected 
with the different subjects. 

(3) The narrow limitations of time. 

(4) The contentions, representations 
and misrepresentations of those interested 
in preventing, delaying or dominating the 
report. 

The number of propositions upon which 
a present day legislature is asked to report 
is too vast for deliberative action. In the 
life of a single American Congress covering 
two years, over twenty thousand bills and 
resolutions are introduced. The total num¬ 
ber of bills introduced in the 1913 session 
of the New York legislature was 4081; in 
California 3922; in Pennsylvania 2726; in 
Wisconsin 1759; in Illinois 1608 and in Ne¬ 
braska 1346. Many of these bills are com¬ 
plex. Some of them involve a hundred 
separate propositions upon which both in¬ 
formation and discussion might be desired. 
The reason for the multiplication of leg¬ 
islative subjects is a topic by itself which 
I can only touch upon. Some of the very 
patent causes may be briefly mentioned. 
Society has become more complex. Indus¬ 
try is differentiated. Improved commerce 
and transportation have brought the world 
together. Business and social relations are 
multiplied. The rules and regulations of 
human life and the demands for redress of 
grievances through the Legislature are cor¬ 
respondingly increased. Whatever the caus¬ 
es, the very numbers, the rapidly increasing 
numbers of propositions before the people’s 
legislatures call for a new force and a 
new method in their disposition. The leg¬ 
islative reference departments are a re¬ 
sponse to that call. 

The mass of material upon any one of 
the prominent propositions before the pres¬ 
ent day legislatures is multitudinous. Upon 
all of them it is mountainous. The volume 
of public documents alone pouring from the 
presses of the civilized world is sufficient 
every year to fill a freight train. Publi¬ 
cations of a single one of our larger states 
make a small library every biennium. Be¬ 
sides these official publications, paid for 
out of the public purse, there are the thou¬ 
sands of institutions, societies and individ¬ 
uals contributing from their own mind and 
their own means to the world’s stock of 
knowledge in theory, in criticism, in ex¬ 
periment. Much of this mass is words. 
Much of it is mere literary stubble fit to be 
turned under by the plow of progress; 
much of it has merely local worth and ap¬ 


.‘bs- 


plication. But scattered through it all are 
the ripe, hard grains of valuable human 
experience and reasoning fit to be ground 
into flour for the bread of human living. 
Now, no one man in any legislature, not 
even the wisest and best, can thresh out 
all this stack yard of straw and find the 
grain in it. 

Most of the members of any legislature 
will always be fairly representative citizens 
of their own calling and locality, familiar 
with some of the occupations and demands 
of their own district; with some general 
knowledge of events of general interest, 
but w'ith no specific, definite grasp upon 
either the facts or the theories relating to 
nine-tenths of the subjects upon which they 
are called to act and no training whatever 
to direct them in their search for truth in 
the vast libraries filled with the stores of 
human experience. For a reasonable and 
intelligent law upon any legislative propo¬ 
sition of today there is needed a safe source 
of accurate, impartial information reduced 
to its lowest terms. “Boil it down” says 
the man with the blue pencil. “The reason 
I wrote a long editorial on that subject,” 
said Editor Bowles of the Springfield Re¬ 
publican, “is because I did not have the 
time to write a short editorial.” This is 
the call of today in the work of the legis¬ 
latures. Boil it down. Cut out the pad¬ 
ding. Condense the essentials. Tell where 
the rest may be found. Give the principal 
facts, the leading arguments and authori¬ 
ties on a single typewritten sheet of legal 
cap paper. The modern legislative refer¬ 
ence department is a response to this call. 

The limitations of time in modern legis¬ 
lative work may be illustrated by the con¬ 
crete case of my own state. The Nebraska 
legislature, convened last winter, was in ac¬ 
tual session for 75 days of 5 hours each, 
a total of 375 legislative hours. There were 
before it for consideration, 1346 bills. 
Therefore there were about 18 minutes for 
the first, second and third readings and roll 
call required by our constitution for each 
bill. If you reply that not nearly all the bills 
were considered, and many of them were 
introduced for buncombe purposes and 
never intended to be considered, I rejoin 
that 263 of these bills were actually passed 
and signed by the Governor, an allowance 
of one hour and twenty-five minutes each 
for three readings, committee of the whole 
discussion and roll call. If you still make 
reply that most of the work upon these bills 
was delegated to and done by. smaller sub¬ 
committees and the results of the subcom¬ 
mittees’ work accepted by the Legislature 
without debate, I respond that the subcom¬ 
mittees usually met at night, wearied with 
the day’s regular work, beset with much 
importunity from special interests, and 
needing even more than when in regular 
session the advantage of organized and di- 


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\ 


MAR 26 1914 


gested data upon the bills which they have 
to consider. For such a call, whereby is 
made available the results of weeks and 
months of special research by persons 
trained to familiarity with the sources of 
knowledge and skilled in the art of impar¬ 
tial scientific condensation and presenta¬ 
tion, has arisen the modern legislative ref¬ 
erence bureau. Its well digested brief is 
like the report to the court of a master 
in chancery or the head of a bureau to the 
president of the United States—a basis for 
action by an enlightened judgment,—an ar¬ 
senal of fact which may not be disputed. 

The clamor of contending interests en¬ 
compasses legislative halls and committee 
rooms. Their paid representatives not only 
besiege the session but even occupy seats 
among the members. The most eloquent 
speakers of the republic loosen the silver 
oratory of golden throats in their behalf; 
the most adroit managers of men, the most 
talented phrase makers who ever touched 
typewriter for the public press are in their 
employ. No important legislation in the in¬ 
terest of the general public has passed 
Congress or any legislature in these states 
within the memory of any man or woman 
which has not been opposed as impossible 
in theory and ruinous in practice by some 
of the ablest intellects and most forceful 
debaters of the time wherein it was en¬ 
acted. In nearly every one of the instances 
just cited the recorded facts related to the 
case have been openly denied and flagrant¬ 
ly falsified before the people’s representa¬ 
tives by persons paid for that work. 

Let me give a concrete case from the 
Nebraska experience. Four years ago there 
came to the Nebraska legislature a man 
from an interior county who had been a 
farmer and was the manager of a co-oper¬ 
ative grain elevator. He brought with him 
a newspaper clipping purporting to be a 
law of one of the states of the union, de¬ 
signed to secure fair and honest weights 
to the grain shipper in car load lots. He 
had the clipping typewritten and introduced 
as a bill. In due time the bill found its 
way to the committee charged with the 
consideration of that class of subjects. 
There appeared before that committee at 
that time eminent men, drawing the larg¬ 
est salaries paid in Nebraska for any ser¬ 
vice, public or private. These gentlemen 
assured the committee upon their word as 
scholars and their honor as members of 
a profession that no such law as that pro¬ 
posed existed on the statute book of any 
state in the union or any country in the 
civilized world. And they further assured 
the committee that the proposed act was 
absurd in its conception and would be ruin¬ 
ous in its operation. To these solemn as¬ 
surances of this learned and distinguished 
company the introducer of the bill replied 
that he knew his bill was a copy of a law 


in force in some state of the union. He 
was not sure which state, but he knew it 
was so, because he had clipped it from a 
farm newspaper. There was a general 
laugh at the authority cited and after some 
further discussion the committee agreed 
to report the bill for indefinite postpone¬ 
ment on the next day. About thirty min¬ 
utes before the legislature met on the next 
morning the farmer member came to the 
legislative reference bureau for help in 
finding his law. A dozen trained assistants 
were at once put upon the task of locating 
the missing statute. Just as the speaker’s 
gavel fell the statute book of one of the 
largest and most influential states in the 
union was placed in the member's hand 
with the page cited where the act was 
found. Instantly taking the law book in 
his hand to the chairman of the committee, 
by much persuasion, he was induced to 
withhold the report and give the bill an¬ 
other hearing before the committee. Since, 
the member argued, the learned advisers of 
the committee were mistaken as to the fact 
of the law’s existence, they might also be 
mistaken as to its effects. After a struggle, 
votes were changed in the committee, the 
bill placed on general file and, after another 
and fiercer struggle, the bill passed the 
house, reached the senate and was referred 
to the senate committee upon that subject. 

There appeared before the senate com¬ 
mittee the same group of eminent gentle¬ 
men, drawing the highest salaries paid in 
Nebraska for any service, public or private, 
with some additions to their number. These 
gentlemen informed the senate committee 
that while it was true such a law was upon 
the statute book of the state where it had 
been located that it was there a dead let¬ 
ter, wholly and completely ignored, and 
that no attempt at its enforcement had 
ever been made, its manifest absurdity and 
impossibility in practice being responsible 
therefor. When the most eminent, eloquent 
and highest priced authorities in the state 
had concluded their advice to the commit¬ 
tee the farmer member handed to the chair¬ 
man of the senate committee a half dozen 
letters on official stationary from the de¬ 
partments in the state in question charged 
with the administration of the measure. 
These letters had been secured by the leg¬ 
islative reference bureau. They stated that 
the act in question had been in force for 
many years in that state, that there was 
no opposition to its enforcement and that 
its effects were generally approved and re¬ 
garded as salutary by all persons having 
an interest in its operation. 

From this single incident which I might 
multiply many times from experience in 
my own state, it will sufficiently appear 
why the most eminent talent engaged at 
the highest salary by the largest interests, 
may not be implicitly relied upon as ad- 




visors to the peoples’ legislature and may 
add one more valid cause why a call has 
arisen for competent, scientific source of 
accurate information upon all subjects com¬ 
ing before the peoples’ representatives for 
consideration and report. The answer to 
that call is the creation of legislative ref¬ 
erence libraries or bureaus in thirty-four 
states and the pending bill and reports now 
before Congress for the creation of such a 
department here at Washington. The ideal 
aimed at in these bureaus is that each 
people’s representative in the legislature 
shall have free of cost at his command all 
the information in usable form which the 
high priced representatives of special inter¬ 
ests have—^and more. 

What is the relation of the legislative 
reference bureau and library to state de¬ 
velopment, more definitely to the problems 
of conservation which this association is 
assembled to discuss? If I have mastered 
the purposes of the Conservation Congress 
from its constitution as “a place designed 
to frame policies and principles affecting 
the wise and practical development, con¬ 
servation and utilization of resources;” if 
I have sensed the spirit of state develop¬ 
ment in my own and sister states during 
the past forty years then I may aptly dis¬ 
cuss the relation of the reference bureau 
to the soil, to the improvement of its qual¬ 
ity and the increase of its product; to the 
waters, their preservation in quality and 
volume, their fullest possible use for the 
benefit of man; to the rocks and nlinerals 
which lie beneath the soil and their high¬ 
est economic utilization; to the people, 
physical, intellectual, spiritual and their 
highest possible perfection in each of these 
phases; to social progress arising from the 
conjunction and co-operation of all the 
fundamental substances and processes 
upon ‘this planet for the elevation of man¬ 
kind and the glory of God. This is a large 
text to preach from and I shall submit 
some specific citations, asking your imag¬ 
ination to step lightly with mine from one 
hill top to another and from the broad prai¬ 
rie land like that of my own state where the 
common people toil to produce the physi¬ 
cal necessaries of human existence to the 
mountain peaks where the poets and 
dreamers of a social state dwell. 

The basis, the fundamental thing in your 
conservation movement, in our state de¬ 
velopment, is co-operative social action. 
Lord Dundreary in the person of the older 
or younger Sothern stalks the stage and 
stutters in plaintive accent as he reads the 
familiar maxims: “Birds of a feather flock 
together! H-h-how c-c-can one b-bird 
f-flock by himself alone?” How can a con¬ 
servation or state development idea flock 
except in groups? Group action may be 
through the political machinery of the 
state or outside it. Hardly any cause of 


importance gets anywhere now without po¬ 
litical action and legal sanctions. Sooner 
or later every social movement of conse¬ 
quence knocks at the legislative door. So 
the whole range of conservation issues and 
every cause connected with state develop¬ 
ment is already indexed in our reference 
libraries and is covered by our card cata¬ 
logs. 

Take the cause which lies at the bottom 
of all social questions—the soil and its con¬ 
servation. At its very threshold are ques¬ 
tions such as these: 

What are the rights of a land holder? 
May he skin the soil ad libitum and turn 
the bones over to his heirs and assignees? 
May society, justly and for the common 
good, tax and take away from him its in¬ 
creasing vai-ie in whole or in part? How 
shall improvements and original land val¬ 
ues be separated in the ledger account of 
society with the title holder and what dif¬ 
ference in treatment shall be accorded to 
these items? The first, the fundamental, 
item in your conservation program opens 
the flood gates of controversy and ten thou¬ 
sand years history of human experience 
in land tenure and land taxation must be 
classified, catalogued and condensed as the 
first stop toward rational legislative action 
dealing with land. 

Suppose the issue is the public health. 
What are the rights and duties of the in¬ 
dividual and the community in its preser¬ 
vation? How have other states and cities 
dealt with contagious diseases? How far 
may the medical profession be trusted to 
act in the general public interest? What 
are the data of the controversies between 
rival medical schools? Is it possible to 
drive disease out of the world? What will 
it cost to do it? Who says so and what are 
his claims upon our confidence? Volumes 
of vital statistics; records of medical re¬ 
ports and criticism; keen, common sense 
comments from common people upon theo¬ 
ries and situation; the accepted, indisput¬ 
able facts showing the ration of epidemic 
small pox to vaccination; the declining rate 
of typhoid in certain cities and the accom¬ 
panying sanitary measures, the relation of 
fleas and wood ticks to fevers and. of dip- 
theria to antitoxin. Here is a continental 
battle field stubbornly fought over for cen¬ 
turies and with conflicting reports from the 
conflicts in different quarters to be sorted, 
sifted and set forth so that the reason of 
the average legislator, acting for the av¬ 
erage public intelligence may act wisely 
and with the support of the public which 
he represents. This single task is a stu¬ 
pendous one yet it must be done effectively 
if the general public movement is to keep 
within hailing distance of the latest scien¬ 
tific discoveries. 

There is the cause of scientific money 
and rational exchange of commodities. 


[ 4 ] 


/ 


Nothing surely can be more important to 
M the business welfare than these. And there 
is here no question that the state must act. 
It is in action now; it cannot cease to act. 
Whether to have one central bank, or 
twelve or four regional reserve banks; 
whether, within the realm of state legis¬ 
lation, banks shall be compelled to insure 
each other’s deposits or whether the sur¬ 
vival of the fittest here, as in zoology, leads 
to the best results? What are these thou¬ 
sands of pamphlets and endless acres of 
disputatious reasonings and imaginings? 
Are there no sane guides to safe legisla¬ 
tion in the field of finance and exchange? 
Is the lamp of human experience which 
Patrick Henry held to light his pathway 
here put out? The very statement of these 
issues stirs old prejudices and latent pas¬ 
sions in the mind of this audience and of 
any other audience before whom they may 
be mentioned. The answer of the legisla¬ 
tive reference bureau and of every scien¬ 
tific mind is that here, as well as else¬ 
where, there is a way out of the maze of 
controversy and confusion, and that this 
way must be found by reason based upon 
the record of human experience. 

The relation of the legislative reference 
bureau as a collector and organizer of in¬ 
formation to the cause of state develop¬ 
ment and conservation must be reasonably 
apparent from these examples. As a mere 
keeper of books and digester of documents 
its functions are important,—nay, they are 
essential to sound political action and time¬ 
ly social progress. I believe, however, that 
there are required other qualities in the 
conduct of reference bureaus than those 
of the cataloger and the condensation ket¬ 
tle. Such are the qualities of social lead¬ 
ership, and the possession of social ideals. 

. The men and women who do this work 
must believe in things to be of much val¬ 
ue to their generation. They must hold 
beliefs and cherish theories. Else they 
would be of no more worth in seeking for 
social truth than a chemist who should 
seek to discover a valuable chemical com¬ 
bination with no theory in his head of the 
untried chemical reactions he was about to 
use. The beliefs and the theories of every 
truly scientific man, whether engaged in 
the social or physical sciences, will always 
be held subject to the actual test of ex¬ 
periment. In their contact with the public 
mind all the evidence and all the argu¬ 
ments so far as known by them will be im¬ 
partially presented. For in the examina¬ 
tion and criticism of all the material by 
many minds is founded the best hope of 
discovery and progress. I believe, however, 
there will always be held by every man 
and woman fit to lead in any cause cer¬ 
tain fundamental faiths—“evidences of 
things not seen,”—as inspirations to effort. 


things believed but not yet proven. Such 
beliefs and ideals for example as these: 

That war may be abolished. 

That waste may be reduced to the van¬ 
ishing point. 

That disease may be exterminated. 

That labor may become more efficient 
and be more adequately rewarded. 

That wealth may be more justly distrib¬ 
uted. 

That the world may, by human design, 
become better and wiser throughout the 
generations without limit. 

Let me speak yet more frankly about per¬ 
sonal beliefs. This is no platform for poli¬ 
tics and no place to wave a party flag for 
gain or office. Yet the history of every 
social reform is inevitably united with the 
story of some political association. It 
would do no harm and would raise no pro¬ 
test were I here to speak of the free soil 
party of sixty years ago and its movement 
culminating in the free homestead act and 
the emancipation proclamation. Let me 
speak of some politics nearer to us in 
time than the civil war. It was my great 
honor and good foi tune to be chosen a del¬ 
egate to a national political convention 
which met 21 years ago last fourth of July 
in the city of Omaha. I shall not mention 
the name of the party because you probab¬ 
ly have forgotten 'it. No political party in 
the history of our nation had more slop 
buckets emptied upon it from political back 
windows than the party there formed. None 
was ever more derided as a collection of 
bewhiskered lunatics and addled brained 
Anarchists than that convention. I read 
anew the declarations of our platform as 
I wrote this address. It sounded to me like 
a pretty good conservation document. We 
declared, first of all political parties in the 
United States, that “The land, including all 
the natural sources of wealth, is the heri¬ 
tage of the people and should not be monop¬ 
olized for speculative purposes.” We de¬ 
clared for a national currency loaned direct 
to the people at a rate of interest not to 
exceed 2 per cent per annum. This propo¬ 
sition was greeted with one wild guffaw 
from Passamaquoddy Bay to Puget Sound. 
Yet I notice now it is seriously proposed by 
file most noble statesman of the modern 
stripe that a system of farm credit at a 
rate a little higher than that proposed at 
Omaha may safely be established in this 
country, based upon the experience of 
Europe. We declared that “Transportation 
being a means of exchange and a public 
necessity the government should own and 
operate the railroads in the interest of the 
people, likewise the telephones and tele¬ 
graph.” Well, that proposition is still un¬ 
der debate but the man advocating it is 
not so generally regarded as a proper can¬ 
didate for the position recently vacated by 
Mr. Harry Thaw at Matteawan, N. Y., as 


[ 5 ] 


I 


he was twenty years ago. We declared 
for a postal savings bank and a graduated 
income tax. Nearly everyone seems to be 
on our side of those questions now. 

We commended to the favorable consid¬ 
eration of the people the legislative sys¬ 
tem known as the initiative and referen¬ 
dum. It was my privilege in conjunction 
with a fellow member to introduce into the 
Nebraska legislature of 1897 the first initia¬ 
tive and referendum bill, which ever be¬ 
came a law in the United States. Since then 
I have lived long enough to hear Colonel 
Theodore Roosevelt from the public plat¬ 
form in my own city tell the people that 
the initiative and referendum was all right, 
because we had to have new weapons to 
fight the people’s battles under changed 
conditions. There are several more things 
we declared for, including the direct elec¬ 
tion of United States senators by the peo¬ 
ple, but you have not time to listen to them 
all now. Nobody is now running for office 
on the ticket of the party we organized 
that day at Omaha but most of the pro¬ 
gressives in all parties, including the con¬ 
servation congress, are busy these days 
carrying home chunks of the platform we 
chopped out of the rough wood on the fron¬ 
tier that 4th of July, 1892. 

So I return to my text,—conservation, 
state development and the relation of ref¬ 
erence bureaus to them. We are finding 
out some things as we go on with this 
work, co-operating with one another, to get 
the greatest results in our lifetime and the 
greatest hopes of what shall come after 
we are gone. We are finding out that it 
is not enough to gather all the material 
upon a subject and then sift it to get the 
best of that material, and then catalog it 
so that we may know where to find it, and 
then organize it so that a busy man may 
quickly grasp the meaning of its contents 
—to do all this for the benefit of members 
of the legislature and a few other public of¬ 
ficers. We have found that for the cause 
of true social progress we must get back 
of the office holders to the great body 
of the people. We must give them the facts 
fitly Organized in briefest form, in simple 
language. So the great reference bureau 
in Wisconsin under Dr. Charles McCarthy 
has published for general distribution some 
thirty pamphlets upon important public 
questions putting the results of months and 
even years of research into a dozen or 
twenty pages which any citizen will read 
with eager interest. The reference depart¬ 
ments of New York, of Indiana, of Ohio, 
of the Dakotas, of Pennsylvania, of Rhode 
Island, of Michigan are doing the same 
thing upon a different set of subjects. 

In Nebraska the Legislature of 1911 
wrote the Magna Carta of our legislative 
reference bureau and put in it these words 
defining our field of action: 


“To carry on research in subjects of spe¬ 
cial public interest, to publish the same 
and in every way to promote the diffusion 
of accurate and reliable information upon 
questions connected with the development 
of civic life in Nebraska.” 

Under another section of the same act 
our bureau is placed under the government 
of the board of regents of the state uni¬ 
versity and provided with a home on the 
university campus. During the sessions of 
the legislature we occupy rooms in the 
state house convenient for members. Ac¬ 
curate knowledge of the history of one’s 
own state is indispensable to sound legis¬ 
lative reference bureau work. So our bu¬ 
reau teaches university classes in Nebras¬ 
ka history, and directs research work and 
publication in that field. We work in co¬ 
operation with other departments in the 
university, calling on them for special in¬ 
formation in the scope of their activities. 
A grant of three thousand dollars was 
made by the last legislature for the print¬ 
ing of bulletins and the Nebraska blue book 
soon to be issued from our Bureau. This 
latter volume aims to give live information 
on every subject connected with Nebras¬ 
ka’s development likely to be of service 
to members of the Nebraska legislature or 
to any thinking citizen. It will not be a 
mere roster of Nebraska office holders. 

It may occur to some of you that the 
very extent and efficiency of this work may 
lead to over-legislation, to the introduction 
of too many bills, to the passage of too 
many laws. Let me say that there is a 
reference bureau plan, wisely and strongly 
made and now in action, to secure less leg¬ 
islation and of a sounder sort. The plan 
is that important matters shall have the 
right of way and that all important legis¬ 
lation in each state shall be prepared by 
an unpaid commission or legislative com¬ 
mittee working through a period of two 
or more years and using the legislative 
reference bureau for its assistant. Public 
hearings will be held and general discus¬ 
sion for two years or more will precede 
the enactment of a law. Under this plan 
in Nebraska we have threshed out a work¬ 
men’s compensation law during the past 
two years. We have now at work a legis¬ 
lative committee on reform of legislative 
procedure and the state budget. We have 
other committees at work upon reports re¬ 
lating to the conservation of water power 
in Nebraska, to changes in the state’s sys¬ 
tem of taxation and to a revision of our 
school code. For each of these the work 
of gathering material, indexing and organ¬ 
izing it in the most available form is done 
in the Library of the legislative reference 
bureau. 

Sixty years ago the Italian patriot Maz- 
zini asked the question “How is a progres¬ 
sive, a social reformer, a radical, a dreamer 


[ 6 ] 





if yoa choose, ever to know that his dream 
is true and that his idea is right?” And 
he answered it by saying that he could 
know it when a majority of all the people 
approved his vision and ratified his plan. 
This Conservation Congress and all kin¬ 
dred associations seek to change the exist¬ 
ing constitution of things. Some of us are 
idealists and some of us are dreamers and 
some of us, perhaps, are lunatics still at 
large. How shall we ever know that we 
are right and the fellows who like things 
just as they are or just as they used to 


be are wrong? In a democracy when we 
get a majority of people on our side of the 
issue, working with us on a plan we may 
consider with Mazzini that we are right. 
And it is the privilege and the duty of the 
legislative reference bureaus in the several 
states to systematically collect, organize, 
index, and edit for presentation to the peo¬ 
ple all the pertinent facts and arguments 
relating to the issue so that, whatever a 
majority of the people decide, the decision 
shall be made in the full sunlight of a com¬ 
plete understanding of the case. 


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